A large van with a huge overcab bed big enough for at least children is probably everyone’s idea of a motorhome (as opposed to a campervan).

In reality the market has shifted very much more towards low profiles these days, and many of those are aimed more at couples who occasionally take children with them, rather than big roaring families.

Still, there is a market out there for families of four or more who want to go travelling. We present our pick of the best motorhomes for families.

Best motorhomes for families

Swift Edge 486

Swift Edge 486

Price £48,255

Berths 6

Belts 6

L/W/H 7.32/2.39/2.98m

Base vehicle Fiat Ducato

Engine 2.3-litre, 120bhp turbodiesel

MTPLM 3500kg

Payload 509kg

You would hope that this year’s winner of the Best Family Motorhome category would make it into this list, and it does.

The 486 is part of the new budget-priced Edge brand launched at the start of the 2020 season. Its appearance means you can once again get a six-berth and six-belts Swift for under £50,000, which is good – although it is not the cheapest six-berth out there.

The interior excels in having room for everyone. The adults can retreat into the roomy and light-filled rear lounge, leaving the middle dinette completely free for the kids.

There is plenty of bed space too – in fact three doubles, made up from the rear lounge, the dinette, and the overcab. All are over 2m in length: the rear lounge bed is actually the smallest.

You don’t get a separate shower cubicle in the washroom, but it is still a good size. And the kitchen is large enough to include everything you should need for a large family. If you have an appropriate licence, you might want to go for the chassis upgrade too.

Sun Living S70 SP

Price £52,865

Berths 5

Belts 5

L/W/H 6.99/2.29/2.88m

Base vehicle Fiat Ducato

Engine 2.3-litre 120bhp turbodiesel

MTPLM 3500kg

Payload 549kg

Adria’s budget range went through something of a transformation in the 2018 season with a completely new modern look inside and out and a whole host of innovations including a washroom that effectively disappears behind a rolling tambour door when you don’t need it. This, and an interior headroom of 2.10m, helps to create a really roomy interior. That means this van can easily accommodate five people in less than 7m without you feeling that you are tripping over one another. No wonder it won the Best Innovation category at our Motorhome of the Year awards that year.

To be fair, it can only accommodate so many in such a relatively short space by having a transverse bed over the rear. The other two doubles are a drop-down bed over the lounge (which does slightly reduce headroom there), and a bed you make up from the settees and table underneath, although this only measures 90cm wide, so is probably only for smaller children.

But that transverse bed means there is also a huge garage included in this motorhome, that is easily large enough for bicycles. It is also directly accessible from inside the motorhome, so acts as one very handy storage area.

The interior style, including the overhead locker with holes instead of handles, is probably more a matter of personal taste.

Auto-Trail Frontier Scout

Auto-Trail Frontier Scout

Price £75,650 ex works

Berths 4-6

Belts 4-6

L/W/H 8.04/2.77/3.10m

Base vehicle Fiat Ducato

Engine 2.3-litre, 140bhp turbodiesel

MTPLM 4500kg

Payload 780kg

With a choice of two large lounges, the Scout, revamped in 2017, has more than enough space for all the family, even on a wet British afternoon. There is a choice of belts and berths because you can opt for the lo-lline or hi-line option, and the latter includes an overcab bed. While both options cost the same, extra travel seats to bring the tally up to six are a cost option.

There is ample storage both inside and outside the van to take advantage of that large payload. The kitchen straddles both sides of the aisle, and is well equipped, although workspace is perhaps at a premium. The washroom is well equipped too.

The only snag is that with all this included and a length of over 8m, you will need a C1 licence to drive this motorhome. Still, if you have that, this motorhome from an established British brand is not one to miss.

Itineo SLB700

Itineo SLB700

Price £59,100

Berths 5

Belts 4

L/W/H 6.99/2.35/2.89m

Base vehicle Fiat Ducato

Engine 2.3-litre, 140bhp turbodiesel

MTPLM 3500kg

Payload 490kg

Itineo, which is part of Rapido, is most familiar to the UK as a manufacturer of budget-priced A-classes (although it does also do low profiles), so a larger model should be ideal for the family looking for a bit of style.

The SLB700 was also launched very much as a children’s model: in the back, opposite a pair of longitudinal bunks, it has a children’s dinette that converts into fifth bed and comes with a jigsaw-shaped carpet.

Such decor might begin to age as your children get older, but the bunks will stiff suffice: they are each 1.95m long.

Because the washroom is slung across the middle of the motorhome, with a partition door on the rear, this area can also be completely shut off if the children want to be on their own.

But there is still plenty of room around the front lounge in front of the L-shaped kitchen. There is plenty of storage too, with a large wardrobe right at the rear. The bottom bunk can also be folded up to allow more bulky items to be stowed.

Swift Kon-tiki 675 Dynamic

Swift Kon-tiki

Price £146,490

Berths 6

Belts 6

L/W/H 9.04/2.35/3.24m

Base vehicle Iveco Daily

Engine 3.0-litre, 180bhp

MTPLM 7200kg

Payload 2105kg

This is really only one for families with serious money – and a C1 licence – and perhaps an interest in motorsports. The Kon-tiki Dynamic is an upgrading of Swift’s already upmarket Kon-tiki range, which is also ideal for families. Available exclusively through Brownhills, it is also currently Swift’s only motorhome range that doesn’t sit on Fiat Ducato. Swift has gone for the mightier Iveco Daily with an MTPLM of 7200kg so that it can provide a garage in here that is strong enough to hold a motorbike. Thanks to the extra payload you also get a 70-litre underslung LPG tank and a generator powered either by a 120W solar panel in the roof or its own 25-litre petrol tank. There’s also a battery charger, a 230-litre fresh water tank and a 145-litre waste water tank.

In short, even if you’re not necessarily mad keen on motorsports events, it’s still a great vehicle to take on a family adventure off-road somewhere. With two fixed beds at the back, it includes an overcab bed that the kids will love because it can be completely zipped away, and a front lounge that can either have parallel settees and two four travel seats in tola or a full pullman dinette with six seats.

Chausson 634

Chausson 634

Price £46,980

Berths 5

Belts 5

L/W/H 6.39/2.35/2.92m

Base vehicle Ford Transit/Fiat Ducato

MTPLM 3500kg

Payload 632kg

Chausson is an ideal brand for families because it is keenly priced, while many of its designs are hugely innovative and so allow a large number of people to be accommodated in a relatively small space.

The 634 is no exception. It has two lounges within its 6.34m of length. Although neither of them are particularly large, they do provide you with separate areas where adults and kids can relax. Then at night time two bunks come down over the front lounge – without obstructing the door – so larger children can go in there. The adults get to enjoy a double that drops down just behind the rear lounge, while the fifth and smallest bed is made up from the rear lounge itself and is a perfect place for the youngest in the family who may still want to be near his or her parents.

Storage at the back here is more than you might need for a family too. And that’s partly because when you raise that bed back up again, you get access to a 300-litre storage area right across the back of the van – a system Chausson calls Easy Box. This can also be raised and lowered itself, to make more room in the already capacious garage below.

The only downside to this ingenious motorhome is a rather cramped kitchen.

Bailey Advance 70-6

Previously known as the Advance 665, this best selling motorhome made it through the revamp that Bailey’s most budget-price range went through in 2018.

It sits on Al-Ko’s low chassis, so everyone should be able to get in, and inside they will find a very UK-friendly layout with a large rear lounge and a large front dinette opposite the kitchen, which is now even brighter thanks to the inclusion of a rooflight. This arrangement means there are six travel seats, so everyone can come with you.

Both lounges make into large and comfortable double beds, while a drop-down bed sits over the front lounge to complete the picture.

You don’t get a separate shower in the washroom (this is a budget van, and anyway not having one allows you to have more room for everyone inside).

Chausson 711 Travel Line

Chausson 711

Price £56,750

Berths 4

Belts 4

L/W/H 7.46/2.92/2.35m

Base vehicle Fiat Ducato

Engine 2.3-litre, 140bhp turbodiesel

MTPLM 3500kg

Payload 426kg

Travel anywhere with a family long distance in one of today’s coachbuilt motorhomes, with their bench-style travel seats in the back, and you are soon likely to hear an ongoing refrain about such seats being uncomfortable. Travel anywhere in Europe with a UK-built motorhome and you may also be worried about everyone always having to get in and out using a habitation door that is on the wrong side when you park on a roadside.

The Chausson 711 Travel Line gets around both these issues by only having cab-style seats in the back, and by having a habitation door on either side. So wherever you park, you can do so knowing that you should be able to get out in safety. Surprisingly, this extra bit of engineering doesn’t seem to have sent the price of the motorhome rocketing up too much either – not if you compare it to similar-sized Chausson vans.

These two rear cab-style seats, together with the swivelled front cab seats, can make a useful front dinette with a pedestal table. But there is still room for a more homely style lounge in the rear with a large round table. A double bed drops down over each lounge.

The central washroom even manages to have room for a central shower. The kitchen opposite it would be cramped if you try to include an oven, however, and because of the rear cab seats, the extra door and the drop-down bed, the front area is limited when it comes to storage.

Still, this motorhome should provide you with miles of complaint-free touring ahead.

BUY IF… You are likely to do a lot of long-distance touring, particularly in Europe.

Auto-Trail Imala 732

Auto-Trail Imala

Price £55,140

Berths 4-6

Belts 2-4

Introduced in 2018 to bring a luxurious rear transverse island bed model into Auto-Trail’s most affordable coachbuilt range, the 732 is a great choice for a family – as long as you include the £825 option pack that gets you two forward facing travel seats. With the hi-line option this motorhome could potentially sleep six, but there is no option to increase the number of seats again, so if you are sleeping that many, two will have to travel separately.

Still, it’s a great option because this layout brings you somewhere the parents can retreat to for a bit of luxurious privacy, plus a large front lounge with plenty of room for everyone. There is also a great amount of storage too, even if you do go for the hi-line option, where the inclusion of the overcab means you don’t get so many overhead lockers up front.

The washroom comes with a separate shower cubicle, and there may have been some thought to family equality here, because it is accessible from the front even when the rear bedroom is partitioned off.

Adria Coral Supreme 670 SLT

Adria Coral Supreme 670 SLT

Price £68,865

Berths 3

Belts 5

L/W/H 7.5/2.3/2.85m

Base vehicle Fiat Ducato

Engine 2.3-litre, 140bhp turbodiesel

MTPLM 3500kg

Payload 333kg

Since the 2018 season Adria Corals have come with double skylights that make the interior feel incredibly roomy, even with a family on board. This motorhome also comes with three travel seats in the back, because along with the two that form part of the L-shaped settee on the nearside of the front dinette, the offside small settee also converts into a backwards-facing travel seat.

That said, the bed that is made up out of this dinette is really only big enough for one, so if you are coming with a larger family you might want to bring an awning too with a bedroom inner, or encourage the kids to bring a tent.

The real plus point here is the room that is left to the parents in the rear: two single beds that are each 6ft 8in long and can be pulled up at the top for comfortable reading. Because they are single they also allow access to what is a huge rear washroom.

Since 2018 Corals have also come with a 10-year water ingress guarantee, so this investment, while substantial, should prove long-lasting.

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There is a market out there for families of four or more who want to go travelling